Mental health is still maligned within the NHS and huge gaps exist in the quality of services throughout the UK, a senior NHS England representative has said.

Dr Geraldine Strathdee, national clinical director for mental health for NHS England, told the Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network that it is "hard to understand" why in one organisation one team can achieve "fantastic outcomes while the one next door can be really struggling."

She added: "Some of the greatest stigma surrounding mental health comes from within our profession [healthcare]."

Strathdee said that healthcare managers need to look at other industries and management practices across the world to see how to improve the approach of the NHS to mental health.

In a speech to delegates at the Foundation Trust Network conference, she pointed out that there was a disparity between physical and mental health services.

She blamed a lack of communication and appealed to "the expertise of these leading managers, the directors of strategy and communication to help us get the narrative right."

She told the Healthcare Network: "I think the key message to managers is that every single place is doing something that is superb, but it's just such an incredible variation.

"Somehow we're not learning the lessons … How do we make people doing the right thing for patients something we're proud of in the NHS?"

In her speech to delegates, she pointed out that 30% to 50% of the daily work of a GP is in mental health, but only a third get any access for formal postgraduate training. Less than 1% of nurses get training in dealing with people with mental health problems and less than 3% of health visitors, who are ideally placed to pick up on problems at an early age, receive training.

"We have a society that has been on a trajectory like this without standing back and thinking 'If we were starting again, would we start here?' The answer would undoubtedly be no."

When Costa award-winning novelist Nathan Filer worked as a psychiatric nurse, he felt he was making a real difference. But 10 years on, with wards closing and staff shortages, he says mental health care in the UK is in 'an utter, God-awful mess'